I've done around 40 interviews in the past couple of months alone and I am exhausted. It looks like I will be unemployed until the next year and I have no idea how to get a job.
Technical lead with over 10 years experience. I often get praises during interviews, but never an offer.
Also, do you honestly think this has been the case at over forty places? That in dozens of separate cases you weren’t the problem, the interviewers were? This seems like an extraordinarily hostile and pessimistic worldview and I’d guess it’d come across in an interview. Eventually you need to do some soul searching into what’s going awry in the interviews. I have a good friend who is a software engineer and is autistic. He speaks about his interviews similarly to what you’ve said. Maybe ask a friend about what they might think is the problem. Be prepared though, because often if you solicit honest feedback from friends you won’t like what they have to say.
Also why are you only applying at places that do leetcode style interviews? There’s plenty of places where that’s not the case, especially if you work outside of tech companies. There’s plenty of great Fortune 500 companies that will expect a 9-5 and are doing good engineering out there. Most of them are hiring remote. Although if you’re expecting FAANG salaries it might be harder to find that type of place.
I wish you the best and hope you get to a better place. Good luck!
It's been sad watching his career struggles and knowing the quality of his work if you can just keep him away from stakeholders and meetings in general
Seems like if he took the feedback well, he could be a good person to hire, unless there were other issues with his interview.
1. Would they get bored or frustrated here?
2. Are their people skills good enough for the role?
3. How long do they plan to be here?
4. What do they expect from us?
But I’m a generalist and find being the dumbest person in the room to be very educational. :)
Very strange post with a lot of poor assumptions.
It's not just someone they might think is 'brighter' but someone that seems experienced and senior enough to have a good shot at taking over or being promoted over them.
A lesser coworker who does not rock the boat and pulls some amount of work (specially the rote kind of it) is seen as the best option.
Ultimately hoping for the best for OP, but sounds like they need to take a break and re-evaluate their perspective and approach.
In addition, people love to judge, interviewing is like porn for these people.
Frankly: You are "on tilt." Every interview you take right now, you are throwing out an opportunity.
"It looks like I will be unemployed until the next year and I have no idea how to get a job." - This is a self fulfilling prophecy.
If you believe that... stop interviewing and rest, let yourself recover from the burnout and grind of interviewing. Let yourself feel like actually wanting to interview and work again.
After that:
Go back to the leetcode grind, make sure you are RAZOR sharp. Make sure you learn from the stuff people post to brag. Start writing stuff you'd brag about.
How do I know all the above: I've tried not doing it, and doing it... I can tell you resting is MUCH better, and the market reacted MUCH more positively to me. I'm talking in terms of offers etc, not just the feedback.
This could take a LONG time, and where I live, career gaps are a killer.
Note, I didn't say you have to write stuff you'd brag about every time. Just be able to do it sometimes.
Pro tip: Use python. Even if you don't use the language normally. It is so good at the questions used in leetcode.
Many replies in this thread are suggesting that there is one thing going wrong but in my case a potentially interesting conclusion is that there are lots of different failure modes coming up. Mostly things come apart in coding evaluations where I get nervous and make mistakes and in general go too slow. Other points of contention that have come up is a lack of experience with specific tools and libraries involved in the work. Experience and methodology with testing and ideas about management is also a big deal. Several interviews have gone off the rails when my take on Agile didn't completely mesh with what companies are doing. So it is good to always look for what in yourself you can improve but also be aware that no one is completely perfect and in many cases even one minor issue can prevent an offer from being made.
To be honest, it sounds to me like the headwinds you're really encountering are ageism and your interviewers are trying to throw you off that scent for liability reasons.
I was a backend web developer for 10 years until COVID hit, and after getting laid off I've been bouncing between menial low-wage jobs. I can be a capable, productive member of a development team but the experience I've had makes me look unhirable? I don't really understand it.
Once you get "high up" enough in the job market and fall down, there is something that is perceived as wrong with you. It's unfair but it's real. I've been in it for 2+ years.
I have reached a point of toxic burnout that I'm having incredible difficulty recovering from. I spend my days at a menial job that causes immense stress and mental anxiety, and then I come home and try to look for jobs, apply to a few before getting discouraged and pass out. The suggestions to "take a break" seem cruel and mocking to someone who desperately needs to pay the bills and can't find a way to work harder to earn more. My only other options are things like housekeeping, diswashing, or other out-of-tech jobs.
It's almost impossible to overcome self-hate and shame when every experience you need to "prove yourself" fails and you are unable to justify your value or existence to family or peers. I used to be a software developer now I'm just an angry wage slave.
You see the issue here right? They are trading on past FAANG brand names. This industry just pretends to not be like others. People drool over FAANG jobs just like finance bros drool over goldman jobs.
No, I gave those as examples of what hourly rates were possible. Otherwise there are a lot of people who started and grew at Upwork, charging around $100/hr.
> People drool over FAANG jobs just like finance bros drool over goldman
Nope. Small and medium businesses and individuals would avoid those names since they would think they would be too expensive. Sweet spot for contracting would be in between $60-$120/hr. Assuming that you have enough experience in the field that you work in and also can demonstrate good track record.
This seems completely true to me. All the older candidates I knew had a way harder time.
And if you reduce your experience level on your resume, they ask you your graduation year and deduce that you've been "out there" for a while.
> I have reached a point of toxic burnout that I'm having incredible difficulty recovering from. I spend my days at a menial job that causes immense stress and mental anxiety, and then I come home and try to look for jobs, apply to a few before getting discouraged and pass out.
Same here. I get panic attacks whenever anything job search related comes to my attention.
You have two paths forward. Either double down, do more coding prep, more mock interviews, keep applying, and eventually you will get that offer. Or aim for one tier lower and find a smaller company or startup that is a good fit for your skill set.
at an average of 6-8 per company
1-2 phone screens
Maybe a take home test
4-5 onsite interviews
1 call with hiring manager
This is the standard process in big tech recruiting.
How did it get so crazy, or is this only for the most elite companies, and positions? I can't imagine going to all this trouble for a java programming position at a regional insurance company or something similar.
In last year in eu Ive been in talks with 3 companies and all of them needed just 1 or 2 15min phone calls and one 1.5h talk over Teams.
So, if you want to do 3 or more tech rounds you better be fucking Microsoft or Apple
Even no name companies are doing at least 4, sometimes 7-8 rounds.
I am sick of it, but what can you do when they all do the same thing.
He was hired after 1 hour long interview, and he could start next monday.
This made me wonder, is it true? I've often stumbled on LC tests, in ways that I (funnily enough) wouldn't have failed myself for. Off-by-ones, went down the wrong path initially but found the right one and ran out of time, that kind of thing. I suppose it depends on where you set the bar.
What are people's experiences? The worst cases for me is when it's an ambush. Talking about architecture or experience and then suddenly the guy wants a DP solution in python.
Somehow when it's just been a test with no person there, I've actually done fine on it. Having the person there in the interview throws me off. They take me down the wrong path, or they get impatient. I did 4 online questions in an hour once, then I thought I was through to a human being, and instead the guy didn't want to put any effort into interviewing me at all, started doing other work, no feedback or anything on a question I hadn't seen.
I've heard that some people just go nuts with the Leetcode. Hundreds of questions done. I've never thought it was a great use of time since there's always more questions you haven't seen, but I wonder how good the return on effort is there.
Nope. It may not entirely seem like it, but our emotional response to things are ours, they're not inherent in the objects of our focus. At least that's what my old and moldy stoic teachers tell me.
> I am exhausted
That's the key. That's real. There's no arguing with that. That you know it is the first step. I agree with another commentator, take some time off. But I'd add that the time off should be smaller and more frequent, something calming and sustainable.
> I've done around 40 interviews > Technical lead with over 10 years experience
Holy smoking duck nuts, that sounds exasperating! You have my sympathy.
Someone once asked a man how he was. He replied, “I’m going through hell!” Said his friend: “Well, keep on going. That is no place to stop!”
Best of luck!
I only started job searching seriously in July and I even took 2 weeks off in August. I was also unemployed. I only interviewed for the roles that I clearly felt was what I wanted. I spent weeks preparing for them and only did 2 final interviews. One I got rejected due to hiring freeze, but I got an offer for the second one in mid September.
So my advice is to really ask yourself why do you want to apply for a role. Don’t machine gun it.
Question for you: When you get this sort of question, do you answer honestly, or "honestly"?
My current company has been in a pretty steep decline in terms of quality. I feel that they undervalue the work that I do, do not pay me appropriately for the work that I do, are skirting around fundamental things (like paying for job-related education/certs/etc.), and are just generally mismanaging the company.
I don't have a problem saying those things - I believe in honesty - however, I realize that me going into an interview as a complete stranger and telling them all of these problems would give that company a very negative perspective of myself. "This guy doesn't even know us, and if this is how he talks about his current employer, he'd probably talk about us the same way too. Pass."
Instead, I try to find related-truths, and avoid the direct issues. "I'm looking to see what else is out there, and find new technical challenges. I feel like I have done a lot of good work and that my current company is in a good position, but I don't want my technical skills to deteriorate, so I'm looking to keep my skills up-to-date by tackling new problems."
It seems to get a generally okay response, but I don't know if that reeks of some kind of "desperation" or not. What is your opinion on something like that be? I'm struggling to be both truthful, sincere, and give an actual answer, not just "corporate-speak" with buzzwords and non-statements.
I've always had a pretty good idea when I've shifted companies (although in one case it was I want to do the same thing but with a solvent company). However, it's always been with people I knew. I've never had a real interview since grad school decades ago.
Honestly, the idea of working with any company in the niche I'm currently qualified in isn't particularly exciting. I've been studying for a few months to move into a different industry (cybersec), so perhaps it would be better for me to back off from actively applying, and instead focus more on what sounds interesting, and come at it from an eye on that subject instead.
It's frustrating because I see a reasonable amount of job opportunities out there for my current field, but I find it very hard to feel excited about applying to a company that does, say, insurance or finance. I feel enough motivation to know that I don't like where I am right now, but I can't quite define how moving into a company who focuses on one of those things would be something that I'm passionate about. I suppose applying to those sorts of jobs would then, essentially be guaranteeing that I move on in a few years.
Volunteer. Especially if you can volunteer at a relevant industry conference, where you can at least mingle with people who might be able to give you a job lead.
Since you said you had 10 years of experience I assume you haven't gone through a downturn before (or maybe got in right at the end of the last one). It's tough but it's a numbers game. Eventually you'll find someone who is hiring, but you may have to do something else for a while.
Pretty low tech but it got me a job. I came from a background of doing Elixir and Node.js backend which if someone recognized Elixir seemed to get me brownie points for doing something interesting. I guess whatever site you’re using to look for job listings you could do the same.
If you have 10 years tech lead experience I assume you are applying for 200k+ base salary positions. The competition for these staff/lead roles is steeper, especially for remote roles during a recession.
Take a couple interviews for less senior positions and knock them outta the park, get your confidence back. Probably won't require too much prep and will be low stress if the job is in your stack.
Getting an offer feels nice - it's validating, especially in a dry spell.
That gave me a chuckle.
Yet, it is a numbers game. Just keep at it and maybe change your focus a bit. E.g. if you target startups leave them aside and focus on banks or health sector. Pivot around.
You need to find the actual problem. You're making it to the interview, so all these companies feel you're at least minimally qualified for the job. Are you just getting unlucky that all these companies are in a hiring freeze and aren't willing to commit right now? Have you changed up your interviewing, tried anything new? Are you having further post-interview discussions that are turning sour? Money discussions?
I would look at doing a few paid practice interviews online. Their services are designed to provide you honest feedback to help you. There may be something going on that you're not aware of and interviewers don't want to tell you.
100% Agree.
This is absolutely key, and when OP says something like:
"I often get praises during interviews, but never an offer."
I kind of feel bad because honestly, many people will give praise to a person just to kind of end the conversation, and I will admit to being guilty of it myself. It avoids the situation where you then have to justify why you didn't like something as if the burden is on me to explain myself, instead of the burden being on them to prove themselves.
Kind of sucks but it is a reality one should be aware of.
Good candidates breeze through the main topic, get through some follow ups, and then we let them ask questions. Bad candidates have trouble with the material, so you might have to cut them off early to transition to their questions and some praise makes that feel smoother.
I think companies are afraid to hire but hr needs to do things so they interview.
Half of the places I interviewed are still looking for that senior developer and have new monthly job ads. There is something preventing hiring and a different force pushing for conversations/interviews
This is especially true if the interviewing process is long.
Definitely get some mocks if you can. There may be something that is easy to fix that you are unaware of.
For better jobs, it is not easy right now. On my most recent job search I had 1.5 offers from big tech (congrats you passed but no more hiring this year!), and 30-40 rejections, from the other big tech, to large enterprise, to small startups. If you are only going for the big jobs, might be time to just chill for a while until things start to thaw.
It takes a bit of patience. One thing that I learned is that ageism really isn't a thing, but that most openings really are for people with a little less experience than us. This is because a lot of companies are willing to take a chance on someone who costs less; but set the bar exceptionally high for someone who costs more.
To keep sane, I worked on learning projects and only hunted for jobs about 50% of my day-to-day time. My general pattern was to spend a few mornings or afternoons hunting through the "who's hiring" Hacker News thread, and then spend the remainder of the month seeing where it went. By the end of the month I was ready to hit the next "who's hiring" thread.
It took me almost a year. Thankfully pandemic unemployment kept me from digging into savings.
Some things to keep in mind:
I recently worked with someone brilliant who told me he had lots and lots of interviews before finding the job. He occasionally rubbed me the wrong way. I suspect he may have habitually rubbed people the wrong way in interviews, too.
Another time I rejected a candidate who was hired against my recommendation, who then went to be a lead. At times he was very difficult to work with, although he generally did the job well. My questions weren't hard, in this case, he interviewed for a job in C# and didn't know how to use a dictionary in a whiteboarding coding session... The interview just got... awkward.
Finally, don't forget that getting this kind of job is always a numbers game. Keep trying. Really. Just keep trying.
Maybe OP needs to consider doing mock interviews or something to figure out what it is that’s going wrong? I’m a good interviewee and got the first job I applied for.
Maybe you worked at the same place for a long time and developed bad habits? Maybe you’re bad at selling yourself?
I once interviewed someone who said he was a team lead at a company for six years. He straight up made up answers to some of the technical questions. It was horrifying. I’m not saying that’s OP but he definitely needs an objective voice to step in and figure out what the malfunction is in the interview process. Maybe ask a friend in tech to perform a mock interview? They can feel silly but also can really help.
Otherwise, everyone I know struggles. Interviews are now involving more and more esoteric questions about things that aren't even on my resume, and sometimes questions about tools that can only be answered if you memorized the entire 1000 page handbook of the tool.
I have been asked questions about things that were tangentially mentioned in my undergrad in a lecture 10 years ago, and I never used anything close to it in my job.
Leetcode hazing varies from place to place. If they insist on the most efficient solution, mostly you are fucked unless you live and breathe algos.
The only silver lining is dynamic programming questions have died out, probably because Meta stopped asking them.
The privileged rich libertarian crypto bros who work at FAANG are all suffering from survivorship bias. Don’t let them makw you feel like shit, their hardships will come in a year or two as well.
I am in the same boat. Nearly 25 years of experience, but I got fired a week after Covid lockdowns began and haven’t been able to find anything since.
Covid was really hard on me, I’ve lost both my parents, my best friend and maky others. I caught covid while holding my mother when she died of the same disease, and my body has never recovered, nor has my spirit.
I ran out of short term savings about a month ago and now I’m living in a friend’s broken down sprinter van after having sold everything I owned.
Just sold my laptop, and promised my mother’s ghost I would try until 1 January. Then I will stop taking my medicine and within a day or two I will join her and my dad. This way I wont have to eat into my estranged son’s college fund.
Good luck.
What makes it worse is the general perception that money is just raining in tech and I'm somehow deficient for not making millions when "everyone else" is.
At least in many other industries like showbiz, people know it's hard to break in and make it. So expectations are set.
Also don't stress too much over failing interviews. Especially for full remote positions companies are trigger-happy. One, two mistakes and you're out. Request a wage that's too high and you're out without any feedback. Not to mention all the companies that are just doing the interviews but not really hiring and those special cases where they simply ignore take-home assignments.
2) Mentally prepare yourself for the grind ahead. A lot of the jobs you are applying to are already filled by the time you get there or the job has been pulled due to economic slowdown but the company is still interviewing because they are disorganized.
3) Try and make a list of the reasons why you are pursuing this job and this career specifically. Clarity around why you are choosing to take on potentially hundred of these gruelling interviews can help you keep your eye on the prize.
4) Be conciously grateful for your blessings. Some people never make tech lead but want it, you seem to have accomplished it early and have acquired a ton of valuable experience. There are others in far worse circumstances. Take heart, although this situation is very tough, because you have a set of problems that many would love to have.
Hope this helps you in some way. May God bless you.
Tech interviewing sucks because it asks you to present linear in the interview to measure alignment but the work is anything but linear most of the time.
The phrase be so good no one can ignore you comes to mind for me, but that isn't the only or best way. There is a book by that name that might help you find things about you that you undervalue but are very unique and valuable compared to the rest.
I try to think about it in terms of "how many other candidates that you are speaking with have done x?"
While searching, spend as much time learning and building something not just with emerging tech but maybe some things you see int he job posts. Level up. Setup a Youtube channel with a daily video journal of what you're learning and keep it in line with a daily slide deck. Embed both in the resume as a link so any technical person seeing it can get to meet you and see how you communicate well before they start interviewing.
Ask for feedback on what you could add to your skillset or present differently on from each interview. Maintaining that kind of relationship will help them keep you in mind and hopefully you get some meaningful input.
Attend a lot of meetups and local groups for tech, software, or whatever in your area. You will meet employees and the more you can show and tell there as a beginner and as you get to know them they will naturally invite you to things you might be a good fit for without asking. The route of an invitation is much better than applying online.
Applicant tracking systems are pretty poor filters, and then HR also is a poor filter because they are illiterate in tech for the most part and play keyword bingo. It's true you can get in front of someone technical and work through that process, but having a warm intro and learning about the company by dropping by to meet someone for lunch, and then learning about it can go a very long way when something becomes available, or a new initiative is in place.
If you do find any of the above helpful or useful, happy to chat as peers via email (anyone). Finding and securing your next opportunity to improve your life shouldn't be this hard.
At what stage of the process do you usually get rejected/ghosted? 40 seems like enough data points to try to detect a pattern. There is something you're doing wrong, but you can learn what it is and improve.
Do you mean as a contractor/consultant or you're own startup idea?
Also god help you if your culture fit algorithm has correlations with race / gender / nationality. And there's pretty much a 100% chance it will.
1. hiring freezes from twitter/blind 2. specific insurance providers from corporate info/ glassdoor 3. salary ranges from levels.fyi/glassdoor 4. specific roles and tech stack from google jobs/glassdoor 5. finding refering relationships through linkdin/blind 6. general company reviews, work life balance, from glassdoor/blind 7. then the actual application through the company website
It's a huge pain in the ass to hand-populate and research. Every platform has a piece of the puzzle but it's not in once place.
When you say 40 interviews, do you mean 40 separate companies?
You probably need to get your interview behavior evaluated by a friend or someone else. Either your technical chops are not good, or you're giving off the wrong vibe. Maybe get rid of Technical Lead off your resume and shoot for a lower-level position, and see how you do.
Look at good interviewers and take tips.
It never hurts to: Be right. Be humble. Be polite. Be practiced. Be introspective. Be experienced.
Ultimately you’re meant to go where you’re meant to go. You need one job. There’s a huge dearth of talent.
Rejections can be exhausting, take time to find an outlet for the stress and anxiety - strong exercise is a good one.
btw if you need help grinding leetcode, ive created spacedleets.com which helps practice leetcode with spaced reptition. (its free)
Have a friend / former colleague who knows you and the industry. Get them to look at your CV and do a mock interview. Then listen to their advice.
You are probably making a basic mistake like badmouthing former employers / being bad at leetcode / not having good reasons for gaps / unreasonable requirements ...
Increasing resilliance will just make you keep failing. You need to fix the problem that has caused you to fail 40 interviews despite 10 years of experience.
Your third paragraph is good probably on target however.